


i cant breathe with the radio on

by quenive



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, but like the fucked up kind of fae. you know the one, fae hal, mind buzz, tagged explicit for the future, tags to be added with the progress of the fic, very vague
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 14:43:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11671182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quenive/pseuds/quenive
Summary: With eyes narrowed and head slanted an inch too far, he tells you that maybe, at times, you should turn and look the other way.(Or; Dirk inevitably gets fucked (up) by both everything, and nothing at the same time.)





	i cant breathe with the radio on

A breeze, the direction of which either unknown or not important enough to get you to know, tickles the back of your neck, sets your small hairs standing at attention. Ten-hut, quoth the rich gust of sharp wind to your tingling scalp and the goosebumps poking at the fabric of your clothes above. Makes you feel like a man with a purpose again, and not just some vapid dolt sulking in a secluded area of an Irish pub, visually unappealing, yet generally residing in the now dimmed limelight, much to his dismay. You hear an anchorman's voice from the telly in the corner, rushed, uncoordinated, the voice of a man who knows it's his last show before Craig from channel 7 takes over his position, and just not giving a shit. A man on a not so righteous mission soon to be "escorted" off camera before the show starts going through some "technical difficulties" when in reality the R-man got enough of being treated like dirt and said a fuck or two Live. The folks at home jerk in outrage, grandma Loo presses her old squishy dough palms over little Jimmy's poor, innocent 15 year-old ears. Then it's a call to the station. Then it's a public viewer strike against the local media's light take on explicit verbal violence. Oh, think of the children.

_Humor the winds_ seeps into your brain, slowly, like honey prickling your throat sliding down, so you do. The door on one side and the open window on the other; the collective "winds" pull each other in and form a killer draft you're openly exposed to. An invitation for a headache. One side lets go of the hold on your cranium the moment someone exists the object. Relieved sighs get held in, focus redirects itself onto the very empty notebook to your left. You tap a dull tune against the hard cover with your equally blunt, unsatisfyingly short nail. An empty anthem of the impatient, the run-down and the denied. Hock a loogie on the ground and cuss at the fucking queen while you're at it? It's not like you never dealt with defeat before. It shouldn't be any different now.

So why is it?

Humor the winds? What kind of grade D bullshit does your mind even get up to these days? Harken, all ye with wits feeble and domes grotty, all ye who enter the grimy self-deprecating crap jamboree! The Dog would like to throw a word in if y'all can spare his barks a listen, he'd rather ruff up the masses instead of brooding on an uncomfortable chair, sliding his finger down from the cardboard cover onto the sky-high quality table. No matter how much you scratch, how much you jab, your keratin rich nipper cannot sink into the board. Oak plywood, your limited knowledge of carpentry whispers to you coldly. Coated with a thick layer of dark varnish. So you scratch again, and gently scoff at your own train of thought. Two, much thinner layers of lighter varnish is more the case. After your stellar observation you leave it be, leave all your thoughts in the rancid gutter where they belong, and sink down into the hard fuckwood of whatever your chair's made of. 

It's been a week without any progress. The day in Dublin you spent with Jake seemed like a time waster at the, well, time, albeit being a loving reunion with a close friend of yours. Who, admittedly, offered to house you during your stay in Ireland. He glamorized the tourist locations you then visited together after you politely declined, claiming your brother had already made reservations in a nice hotel in the very outskirts of Enniskerry, tailored to your vaguely specific requests. Not too far from Dublin, but far enough from the commotion and smog of the town, in close proximity to mountains, forests, all the shit you got informed about when you were presented with the general gist of your quote unquote mission. You're not an errand boy by a mile, but your pride meter is high enough not to decline an aunt's request when the same family member has done so, so much for you in these past two decades. A week and a sad friendly goodbye is behind you already, and you're left with a full notebook of blank pages, a headache for days, and the angry eyes of locals constantly burning holes through your back whenever you step foot into a pub.

Pubs. You're not too fond of these. People talk in hushed whispers when you're close, walk in a wide arch around you whenever you seem to be passing, inside or in the front, kicking pebbles around with your hands shoved deep into your pockets. This isn't California. The air smells unfamiliar, heavy on your ribs and thick in your lungs. You're not someone they sit near these past few days once the word spread like wildfire in the middle of a rain-stingy summer. That boy, the one with the covered eyes and the persistence of a starved wolf limping after an injured hare; he's notorious for kicking it in the taprooms tourists rarely bother to glance at in favor of the shinier, less authentic places aggrandized to absurd proportions. But you, the boy, you're far from the soiree type, and have barely even touched the drink in front of you, now simmered down to room temperature. And it'll stay there until you're kicked out despite there being no alcohol in your system yet and despite keeping a current low profile. It's plausible just because your presence is unnerving and, to some, even bothersome. 

You ask too much. You invade people when you think they're drunk enough to talk to your shiny ball-pointed pen and exposed notebook. Like an amateur journalist no one likes, a prying eye too dry to even blink at this point. As shit-faced as some people do tend to get, they turn their heads and wash down your unanswered questions with another cold one. You have been verbally threatened more than once, and nearly physically assaulted when your own boundaries got challenged by a slip of a stranger's tongue. Then you'd pry, and pry, and pry, until your verbal crowbar got bent by the reluctance of the vehicular contraption you're trying to hijack.

A fortnight left. You have a feeling it's not going to be any different from what you're facing now. Strangers dripping with knowledge, unwilling to share with the likes of.. you. If you're lucky you can make out the hushed whispers, provided you tiptoe around the accent and language barrier. 

You're going nowhere, still harboring only facts the internet left you with. If it were that easy you'd be done here before your plane even took off. America might have this, too, but they weren't kidding when they said they were shooting for authenticity here.

_There are places where the veil between worlds is thinner, and these places see more fae. Ireland, your current location, is said to be one._ Not that you believe in any of the mentioned, not that Rose does either. You're still the skeptic so might as well get a gavel and sue yourself for saying that flippant of a thing, in this of all places. It isn't a bad horror flick (if you choose to ignore Jake's persistent insisting), you're not some faceless white protagonist about to get mauled as soon as you step first foot out the place just 'cause your mouth walked ten miles away from its lane. Extricating your aunt from, what? Sharing false information in published books, to be read by millions of hungry critics worldwide? You know her. You know how accurate, to-the-point she tends to aim her literature's content to be. Simply, without a doubt, to die for.

Mentally you contort at the thought and finally wrap your fingers around the not-so-cold glass still a bit moist from the humidity. Neither Rose nor Bro would let you go if it was even as remotely dangerous as the locals like to make it out to be. You wouldn't go if it was an actual threat to your life either. Bottom's the fuck up.

Beer is an acquired taste, that's for sure, but you're not really concerned about the way the back of your tongue clogs the beer's way down and you will it to relax and stop the subtle gagging. A pint, you tend to order, despite low-key loathing everything Guinness has to offer, taste-wise or in general. You try not to let your rookie drinking skills show in front of the group of men sitting at the rounded table, in the far right. With lights dim and music as quiet as the unpopular joint's gruffled male chatter, with the bar tender lazily leaning back, looking up at the anchorman's internal struggle not to verbal vomit on live near-midnight TV, qualms start to poke at you starting from your toes then coursing up along your body, ending on the last tipped lock of blonde hair aimed downwards rather than up now that the day is coming to an end, and the gel strength is wearing thin.

To royally fuck it would be an understatement if you've ever thought of one. It's not like you're feeling fresh, anyways. The night isn't young anymore, and there is no doubt in your mind that you are going jack shit nowhere for at least another two days. You give it a two days yeah, tops, and take a quaint little croquet hammer blessed by a garden gnome or whatever the fuck you're supposed to be scooping non-viral info on, and you shove it so far up your princely keester you ride the tool through hoops, much to the consternation of the sport's balls and their prized ponies themselves. You'll nicker for your own sugar cubes, thank you very much, so you get a whiskey to match your quiet bunt against all the fuckery you've fallen under this past week.

Sometimes you like to swallow your voice while the whispers slither out on their own, though even then they sound hoarse like you've been straining your vocal folds for the majority of the night, which you haven't, at least not _this_ night. A minute passes and you're still smoothing your fingers along the soft edges of the rocks glass offered to you by the bar tender, now visibly tense at your evidently intrusive presence tainting his poor polished dishes. But even with some eyes subtly following you back to your table and the long, stretched out silence that came with you accidentally setting the glass down a bit too hard, a bit too loud, you promptly regain your composure and drink half of the glass up in one go.

With all due respect to the fine liquor, this is fucking horrible, what the fuck.

"That's no good for you now, is it?" he asks. You swirl the remainder of the drink for a few seconds, captivated by the way your tilting makes the golden-brown liquid climb up the walls, then slide back down. Ice duly clanks against glass. Melting. Watering down the alcohol you weren't too drawn to in the first place.

"It's not," your strained reply is washed down with a thick swallow. 

You hear a shift, heavy glass dragging along the smooth table surface, then a long, excruciating pause.

At that point you feel too anxious to look up from your drink. There is approximately a metric fuckton of stomach butterflies riding up a ninety degree rollercoaster track and falling right back down with quadruple the intensity, over and over again, right there in your gut. It's not whiskey your body's rejecting, you note, as plausible as the notion stands. It isn't even the newer gale hitting you from behind even when you know the window's been closed long ago. Then, when there's a short "clank", you're prompted to give in and glance up. Just what are you afraid of seeing here?

Nothing, 'cept the glassy crimsons peering at you, the expected intensity replaced with lazy infatuation. His index finger nail is barely grazing your beer glass, but he taps it again anyways for good measure. You feel like an open vivisection for him to poke and prod at. In search of comfort you reach for your open notebook and drag it over to press your finger tips into it, to feel the paper textures, to absently smear already rushed ink.

And with his elbows on the table -- barely touching the table -- he taps his chin with his fingers, envelopes half of his face with his hands, one perfectly folded over the other. They're unnervingly smooth in their pursuit with movements that glide through air, still overwhelming to your vision and dropping uncanny treats for your optic puppies to gobble up. 

"Do you want to know more?" He quirks a brow, as white as the hair falling down his forehead but, with a lot more character? Just for that one you make a pause to move your drink to the side and squash the middle of the notebook where pages dig into with the heel of your palm. All professional-like, like you're sitting with a juvenile CEO about to either promote or fire you. Ultimately doing neither of those and instead, after a good three minutes of blowing thick cigar vapour into your face, sends you off to fetch a decaf and two croissants. You can't even mimic his movements to level out the subtle power imbalance, intangible and seemingly inexistent, yet biting, clawing, snarling at you through the thick glass he hides behind. Couldn't square up to save your life, not even when you straighten up to contrast him. Calculated movements turn out looking stiff most of the times. Right now is one of those.

You clear your throat. But it doesn't sound right. 

"Yeah. I do."

And you're itching to say more. But it doesn't come out.

Judging by the way his posture completely shifts when he leans back into the chair, you can only guess he feels the same. Which he probably absolutely does not and your assumptions suck stank ass. So you fumble for your pen, unmentionably desperate to, what? Give him a cue. Prompt him to spit it out. Anything to get your pathetic two man show on the road, you guess. Backstage's getting cramped and you're ushering him out in the spotlight but his heels are nailed to the fancy parquet that doesn't even belong there. They won't budge. You're both the choreographer and the prompter in the little pit dip of this cruelty theatre here, for st. Pete's sake, the crew's incompetence drives you wild every dragged step of the way. You just wish he would humor you.

But he doesn't humor you just yet. 

Come to think of it. He hasn't been humoring you all night. Or since he got here. 

You try to recall when he got here, to pinpoint the exact moment he sat down with you and started chatting you up in a voice you can't completely recollect at the moment either, despite having heard it just a few moments ago. But he's always been here, and you've already got a handful of info out of him, haven't you? Your ink-smudged finger. The warm semi-plastic pen. 

You confirm it, yes. Yes, you do want to know more, yes you do want him to tell you more. From your rebellious mouth he's quick to know that you're not fooling around, and that you're ready to pay any price he throws at you. Standard procedure when it comes to demanding -- asking -- facts from people about something you're deeming less and less worth your time. Money? You got that shit. If there's a muggable person in this joint it's you, sitting pretty in a denim jacket like an armored van made out of jeans. A jan. He makes a seemingly off-hand comment about bribery and you wince when he wraps his long fingers around your half-empty beer glass (prosecute a guy for pessimism?) and brings it to his mouth. Not sipping, pressing the very edge into his full bottom lip.

_No, there's no payola at work here_ , you insist, nervously doodling a scribblebeast in the corner of a page to channel your insecurities into. As exhausting as keeping a vaguely collected exterior is, the curtain will remain draped all over your restless body with only your feet poking from the bottom. _It's a bunglerish exchange of goods between two strangers over a soft drink. Look, see, you're not going into detail with him here. Either he takes your bribe -- pardon, interchange offer -- or say that he won't so you can pay up leave before it hits midnight. That's when you turn back into a pauper and your car morphs back into a plump radish._

There's something you recognize as fascination on his face. Maybe your charming phrasing got to him, maybe he notices how unnaturally loose your posture is at the moment. Pause. Weren't you stiff just a moment ago? 

With eyes narrowed and head slanted an inch too far, he tells you that maybe, at times, you should turn and look the other way. 

But you just keep your hazy gaze planted on him. As if to oppose his demand masked as a request masked as a suggestion. It's hard to make out what is it. And you don't really want to? What _do_ you want, at the moment? You're not drunk. You're not hallucinating. When you ask him what he means by that he doesn't answer. His hand is busy fooling with the glass, tipping it far enough for the liquid to reach the edge, but never tipping over and spilling. For real. Is he for real?

You're pressing your palms into the table's edge to pull yourself in closer. No one hears you, and no one seems to bother, but you're sitting on needles and while the collective sharp miscellany doesn't quite pierce yet, the incorporeal weight atop your body might slide you down in the longrun, anyways. It all makes you hide your voice when your desperation bubbles out, when you feel your shades go askew and when you know there's an unplanned lock of hair on your forehead. Gazing at him keenly, a frog in your throat.

"Please?"

_If you insist._

Which you do, immensely so.

* * *

You call your brother that night.

He's " _shedding the work shackles off his ankles but like it isnt a brush and a slip of the foot here. im going all out with the james wan modus operandi and maybe then i can repeatedly kick myself in the buttocks with the choice ass pimp cane i made out of my own femur_ ". 

"Why don't you tell me how you really feel?" you ask through a smile you feel guilty about forcing. 

You pinch the bridge of your nose as you recline on a nearby hotel provided chair. Tilting your head back feels good. So you do that.

"Please kid, at least wait for me to nab a proper sponsorship before I self-publish an unreduced autobiography. Which, en passant, blows Rose's fairy erotica out of the picture and into a sad little gutter in a blitz. If you want your aunt's bankruptcy on your soul press 1, if you want to input your own day's escapade press 2, if you want this pre-recorded message to drop it like its hot to some royalty free beats slam your face into the keyboard 'cause you ain't got 'nuff digits for these slots."

As tempting as dropping your face on your phone sounds like at the moment, you don't.

"None of the above? Your serenades are generally my Achilles' heel, but I'm afraid your offer's been turned face down into a mustard frieze carpet getting cuffed from behind. It has the right to remain silent. Everything it says can and _will_ be held against it in the court of please Bro don't rap in my ear it's like, one ey em, the fuck."

"But your lullaby?" You can almost see the mock-frown on his face through the whine to which you scrunch your nose up, distastefully so.

"Nix and nae." You cross your legs over a too-short coffee table, stretching out. "If it's one thing I've learned in Cloverland so far is that a ditty of any kind turns the wrong heads 'round these parts."

But not yours. Yours is too busy containing your throbbing, aching brain. And yes, yeah, you are completely aware of the fact that brains do not tend to be in pain themselves but you'd rather not correct your terminology for you cannot spare a single fuck out of the registry to offer. S'cuse me miss, got change for a fuck you? No? Fuck you.

Dave does the whole "come to think of it" voice and brings your own day's adventures up, as he usually does. The shift of tone was intentional and expected. It's a routine check-up call, after all; he tells you about his day, you exchange a few more abstract pleasantries, then you tell him about your day. Usually, there's not much you even can say, given the stingy nature of the local locals. Where you've been, what you've done, the tourist traps you've visited to pass the boredom. Next week you're going to Dublin again, you told him yesterday. Jake for one is actually excited that you're here in his vicinity. And you won't lie, spending only one day with your best _chum_ wasn't nearly enough to properly catch up in person. You're glad you have someone to eccentrically tug on your forearm and point at things worthy of photographs, and someone to take hideous selfies with now that Roxy's out of reach. 

Today, though. Dave's asking you about today. You actually open your mouth to reply, but words get lost, so you close it, pursing your lips.

"Hal," he told you extending his arm for a handshake. Hesitant at first but pleased with the information he shared, you then also reached forward to grab. Firmly, and with your purlicue into his. 

Common sense stopped you when your mouth started wording out an S just before it hit the T. 

"Dirk," you replied. And for a moment, blink and you'd miss it, there was a wave of strong condemnation on his face with his jaw tense and expression.. displeased. If you could, at that moment, you'd compare it to a child that just got denied a peer's toy. It may be literally the same one, same looks and colorful features, but fuck, try telling a toddler they can't have someone else's shit. 

Then you remember exiting the pub, and all your "sober" thoughts and critical thinking capabilities flooding back into your skull. Everything, up until that point, felt like a fever dream. The snarky, sharp grin of the man who you shamelessly stare at through fogged glass. His voice, the way he told you things you don't remember but documented in writing, anyways. The notebook has been on your person the whole short rent-a-car drive to your hotel.

And now it's sitting there on the nightstand, cold and yet to be touched while your brother gives you a little "hello?" to snap you out of it. You've been _in it_ for a good thirty seconds. 

"Yeah, no. Same old foot in the slammed door sort of mess," you bluff.

He believes you. There's no reason for him not to.

After all, it's not like you could put it into words even if you tried. 

When you hang up you open Pesterchum to text Roxy, but decide against it. 

Then you open it again. But then you close it, again.

There's something reaching to you from afar. Pillow-muffled whispers that make you jerk your head like a meerkat in lion's clothing attending a hyena-only hootnanny. They're.. not there? But they also are. You need both an ice cold shower and a full 12 hours of near comatose slumber. First though, it feels kind of dumb and almost traitorous to yourself to do so. But you do the dumb thing anyways.

_Don't have to believe in it, but don't fuck with it either._

And your narrative's going completely to shit. If you had a hold on it before, you don't now, and even if you did now, it would be all slick and slippery with your brain's buttery worry-juices oozing from under your clenched fists desperately clutching the only fragment of this chronicle you have left. It's mind-boggling. You genuinely, and that means quashing every hyperbole that even dares to peak its little overstated head out from underneath the bed you used to dread as a frightened youth, do not feel like yourself. You haven't for the past few hours. And you aren't now. 

Naked and wary, that's what you are. The dumb thing?

You kind of take a shot in the dark here. The bullet gets lost in the night and the only traces of it are the gunshot echoes still thudding through your ears and maybe that little "oof" from like an owl, or whatever? Whatever.

You leave some bread and cream out on the small balcony connected with another, much smaller neighbor angle-balcony. Before you close it you take a deep, controlled breath. The air still feels the same. Sharp, heavy, foreign.

Sleep doesn't come easy after that.

That morning you wake to silence; maddening as it is eerily calming. A whole world of birds disappeared into the dead of the night, swallowed by something unnamed you're assigning a picture to, a mind's ink blob for naught in its purpose. There's no face. Only name.

'Hal,' he talks to you with a voice like stirred radio. You recall comparing him to a borzoi and begin wondering why you did so. Why was the association so fitting, at the time? Elongated features, sharp edges, the uneasy feeling when one stares up at you with eyes you know are borrowed? A borzoi was not always a borzoi, you think before you shake yourself awake, thoughts consuming you even before your mind becomes aware of its surroundings. Glassed-over stare and a stretched out grin substitute what features canis lupus long shed, but still keeps a yarn of anyways.

When you smooth your hand up your sheets, there's a cold patch right below the partner side's pillow. It's unnervingly icy. No one's been there, but it doesn't feel as empty as it should. 

You're not prepared for the dull ache in your bone narrow, or to feel it this intensely, this... specific. You want to jolt up and throw the covers off yourself. You want your skin to breathe. You want the fabric of your dumb stupid towel covers to stop catching at your dumb stupid flesh. It's too hot. It's too heavy.

_You want..._

_H-_

You're not sure what you want. But you want it.

**Author's Note:**

> thank u kimi for dealing with my writers block u rule yo
> 
> mood music, or moodsic, brought to you by [dead man's bones](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A44YACodFDM)
> 
> feedback very much appreciated, let's hope for a quick chapter two from my side pf


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